Robert Durst, eccentric heir to a real estate fortune in New York who for half his life had managed to avoid problems with the law but who in 2015 had become a “most wanted” after confessing “to having killed them all” in a documentary on Hbo, was found guilty in Los Angeles of murdering a friend over twenty years ago.
The jury’s verdict, after more than seven hours in the council chamber, was the latest chapter in a decades-long saga that began in 1982 with the mysterious disappearance of Durst’s first wife, Kathie, and today landed the “culprit” for the murder. by Susan Berman in 2000, the friend and daughter of a mafia boss in Las Vegas who would help him cover the tracks for his wife’s disappearance and death.
The millionaire, who pleaded not guilty, was charged with shooting Berman in the head at his Beverly Hills home in 2000. The prosecution believes the woman, 55 at the time of the murder, helped Durst cover up. his role in the death of his wife Kathleen and that Durst killed her to prevent her from responding to the NYPD investigating the woman’s disappearance in 1982.
Durst, who is 78 and appeared in court in a wheelchair, was found guilty of first degree murder. It will be up to a judge to decide whether to apply the death penalty to him.
A black sheep of one of New York’s largest real estate families, Robert Durst was arrested in March 2015 on the eve of the final episode of a six-part biographical documentary broadcast on HBO. Entitled “The Jinx”, the series rekindled public interest in the case and saw Durst himself participate.
“What the hell did I do? I killed them all, of course,” he muttered, thinking he wasn’t being heard while his words were being recorded on the microphones instead. All, according to the indictment, are besides Berman, Kathie Durst and Morris Black, a neighbor torn apart, by his own admission, with a saw and a kitchen knife.
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